I'm an entrepreneur.
How do we grow?
From idea to exit
Your Story
Every startup begins as a story about how you, the entrepreneur, will change the world for the better with your idea. How well you craft and present your story is a major part your early success.
As your company's story becomes reality, your continued success depends on how fast you grow and how well you respond to what your customers and the market tell you.
New Tools, New Challenges
Entrepreneurs today face a unique set of advantages and challenges. A slew of easy to use business and software tools combined with inexpensive product development options have enable resourceful entrepreneurs to get a new product or service to market faster than ever. This has resulted in a flood of new opportunities for investors and has set their expectations higher than before. Now they expect real customer traction and an established growth curve before they'll invest. Accessing early stage funding has never been more challenging.
Sage offers entrepreneurs at all stages the chance to perfect their story, hone their strategy and presentation skills to optimize their chances of attracting, customers, investors, partners, and employees. Our combined entrepreneurial, investing, and enterprise experience and networks offer founders a clear advantage over competitors.
The Venture Acceleration Process
Our process typically begins with the Sage Accelerator – a complementary session where you pitch your business in a “safe environment” to a team of Partners. You’ll receive actionable feedback, insights, and ideas. If we mutually agree that working with Sage can add tangible value to your company, we can be engaged to assist with a specific need – such as recrafting the investor deck, updating financials, tuning the business model, or otherwise helping you to better tell your story. We typically work on long-term engagements to help accelerate growth, assist with fundraising rounds, and guiding to a successful exit.
Sage Partners is not an investment firm - although many partners are active individual angel investors and/or L.P.'s. Our value is more in the time we invest with our clients and from our active network of funders. At last count, approaching 200 professional investors/firms from seed to Series D where we have personal connection.
We Win Together
In all cases, our compensation is aligned with your success. Because at Sage Partners, we don’t have junior staff that need billable hours. We are a team of accomplished senior executives. We take on projects where we feel we can add tangible value and work alongside management to get the job done. When you win – we win.
Here are a few case studies that help illustrate what we can do. If you are interested in learning more, please contact us.
Helping Entrepreneurs Experience the Thrill of Acceleration
Defining Successful Outcomes
At Sage we work with venture founders and their teams to define successful outcomes and the path to achieve them. Measuring success is a critical factor (sales, user adoption, client pipeline, profitability, funding, valuation) and sequencing the key milestones is key to putting the venture on the right track. Think of milestones as dominoes; hitting one milestone sets up the next one on the path to meeting your goals.
We Work to Improve the Odds
Our objective is to help ventures improve the odds of achieving success. To accomplish this, it’s important to address the factors that will have the greatest impact. Our approach is straight-forward, but market tested: Focus on the customer. Simplify the solution. Articulate the core proposition. Avoid head-to-head battles. Strengthen the team.
Accelerating Development
We look to accelerate development and shorten all time-frames. In today’s continuously evolving market, speed matters. And the process for creation is continuous, the team must always be designing, launching, learning, iterating and evaluating (repeat). The team must set key deliverables and drive to meet them. We work with you to align every part of the plan and team around one calendar. Celebrate wins, make them a habit, build the muscle.
Maximizing Value for both Founders and Investors
Our aim is to maximize the value of the venture for both Founders and Investors. We help the team focus on minimizing waste (time and resources), spend cash as though it is your own. Spend as little time fundraising as possible, but raise a bit more than you need. And most importantly deliver on your plan, which will generate funds for continued growth.
